Improved, High Power, Eye Safe, Solid State Laser

摘要

The Phase I SBlR technical results demonstrate the feasibility of a solid-stateRaman shifter to generate 1.56 micron light. The 1.56 micron laser source was based on a compact, Nd:YAG-pumped, intracavitv Barium Nitrate, solid-state Raman shifter (SSRS). The experiment demonstrated diffraction limited, 1.56 micron output at greater that 250 mJ/pulse, with an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 60%. Some nice features of this novel technique were a very large aperture (7.5 mm, used for maximum power extraction) conversion of the highly multimode pump beam to a diffraction limited, single transverse mode output via nonlinear Raman clean-up. Optical damage was avoided through the optical limiting properties of an intracavity nonlinear element. Extremely high conversion efficiency was achieved, and the measured Raman in Barium Nitrate was a record 11 cm/GW 1.064 micron. This Phase I effort provided a laboratory of the SSRS system capabilities, including pulse repetition rate scaling.